Coroner Says Taser Played Role in Death : Police: The ruling criticizes one Ventura officer for using the stun gun ‘like a cattle prod.’ A captain says those involved ‘acted appropriately.’

Ventura County Coroner F. Warren Lovell declared Friday that shocks from a Taser stun gun were a primary cause of the death of a 24-year-old psychiatric patient two months ago, and he recommended that Ventura police restrict their use of the weapon.

Lovell criticized Ventura Police Sgt. George Morris for using the stun gun “like a cattle prod” to force Duane Johnson of Oxnard to comply with officers’ instructions while he was tethered face down to a gurney shortly before his death.

The coroner said that officers should use the Taser to end violent confrontations with crime suspects but not simply to gain compliance when a suspect no longer poses a threat to them.

“Police should use the Taser to get someone down who is dangerous, but this guy was using it like a cattle prod,” Lovell said after releasing his written finding that Johnson died because of heart disease, violent exertion and “Taser gun stimulation.”

In response, Ventura Police Capt. Randy G. Adams said an internal investigation showed that all four officers involved in the incident on Feb. 13 used reasonable force and abided by department policy.

“Nothing we saw in the coroner’s report changes our opinion that our officers acted appropriately,” he said.

Speaking for Police Chief Richard Thomas, the captain dismissed Lovell’s recommendations. “The coroner exceeded the scope of his report” in suggesting changes in police policy, he said.

Adams said he could not discuss Lovell’s characterization of Morris’ actions because of a $2.5-million legal claim Johnson’s parents have filed against the city. Nor may the sergeant discuss the case, police have said.

Lovell said he could not determine whether Johnson’s death was accidental or a homicide. “I frankly didn’t know what to put,” he said. “I don’t think it comes under homicide because the guys were doing what was within their procedure.”

Johnson was a cardiac patient at Ventura County Medical Center when he died Feb. 13, shortly after he was jolted repeatedly with stun guns by police officers who were called to subdue him.

Police said Johnson, who had a history of psychiatric problems, began throwing himself into windows and walls after he was told that he would be transferred back to a mental health facility near the hospital. He had been admitted after a near-fatal heart attack two weeks before his death.

Police acknowledged jolting Johnson four times during the 45-minute incident--once with a Nova stun gun during the initial struggle in his hospital room and three times with the Taser to stop him from grabbing at people and to force him to submit to handcuffing.

But Lovell said that witnesses’ versions of events differ sharply from police accounts. And the coroner said he has concluded that Johnson probably was shocked nine times with the Taser, including several times when he posed no threat to anyone.

“There are several versions of what happened,” the coroner said. “But what I consider most credible is that he was Tasered a number of times while en route back to mental health while he was restrained on the bed.”

Once inside the mental health facility, the Taser was applied twice more when Johnson refused to be handcuffed while being moved from the gurney into an isolation room, police and Lovell said.

Police have said that Morris stunned Johnson on each shoulder blade for about a second to allow his arms to be brought behind his back.

But Lovell reported that, according to witnesses, Morris “was evidently demonstrating the use of the Taser as to how to apply it to certain muscle groups on the back to control the patient.”

“Evidently, he was kind of lecturing to the guys while he was doing it,” Lovell said. That indicated to him that Morris considered the use of the Taser on Johnson to be routine, the coroner said.

After Johnson was handcuffed, witnesses noticed that he had grown limp, Lovell said. One witness, a mental health worker, said that Johnson’s body was clearly flaccid within about one minute of the last shock, Lovell said.

“It was a very short period of time from the two applications to the back and when he went limp, then was discovered to be in cardiac arrest,” the coroner said. “And I think that’s one of the causes of his death.”

There has been little independent research on the safety of the Taser, Lovell said, but he is sure within “a reasonable medical certainty” that the weapon helped cause Johnson’s death.

The patient’s “moderate to severe” heart disease and his “schizophrenic violent exertion” during his struggle with police also are “co-equal causes,” Lovell said.

Lovell’s finding represents at least the third time that medical examiners in California have declared the 50,000-volt Taser to be the cause of a death. Additionally, the weapon was found to have contributed to one other death.